The Mill Valley Planning Commission has signaled its support for changes to a proposed affordable housing project on Hamilton Drive.

Fine-tuned design elements were presented by the San Francisco architectural firm Van Meter Williams Pollack at a study session on Tuesday. The commission did not take formal action. The meeting was the second review of the proposed redesign following a session on May 23.

“I think you’ve achieved everything we’ve talked about,” said Ernest Cirangle, a planning commissioner.

The project at 1 Hamilton Drive is being led by EAH Housing, a nonprofit organization in San Rafael. The design plan for the 13-acre city-owned property calls for a four-story building with 45 dwellings on 1.75 acres.

All the residences would be classified as affordable, with the exception of the manager’s apartment, and the complex would have 65 parking spaces in the garage. The height of the complex would be approximately 56 feet at its highest point. Forty-five trees would be removed.

Jon Yolles, chair of the commission, said the architectural firm would likely return to the commission later this summer with a completed plan and a draft environmental report.

The commission previously flagged issues such as the building color, the orientation of stair towers, the building height and massing on the northwest corner on Hamilton Drive.

Rick Williams, the lead architect, presented nearly a dozen modifications to the building design to reflect the desired changes.

Williams said the entry canopy was revised to remove a concrete cover and replace it with a trellis with a metal cover; a new stairwell into the lobby was added; and a railing was redesigned to be more transparent. He also presented a new color palette, a modified roof slope to allow for more solar panels and a reduction of massing in the northwest corner.

“There’s an approvable project here,” said Kevin Skiles, a planning commissioner.

The project has been met with much opposition in the community, and public commenters continued to assert their objections.

“I object to the size, the scale of the project. I think it is not a good fit for that particular area,” said Elena Mcclain, a Mill Valley resident.

In June, a community organization called Friends of Hauke Park sued the city over its housing policy and specifically the 1 Hamilton project, alleging its location was an intentional effort to force affordable housing on the east side of the city, away from the more affluent neighborhoods.

The lawsuit challenges the city’s adoption of its housing element and calls for the city to reevaluate the sites where affordable housing is located. The city approved its housing element, which includes the 1 Hamilton Drive project, on May 15. Under a state housing mandate, Mill Valley had to show it can permit at least 865 new residences over the next eight years.

Larry Fahn, a Mill Valley resident, said at the study session that other sites were determined to not be viable based on a “cursory decision.”

“I think it’s a sad day when the environmental community has to sue the city of Mill Valley for noncompliance for environmental regulation,” Fahn said. “There was a lack of even a cursory review of the alternative places.”

Other Mill Valley residents committed their support to the project. David Levin called housing a “dire need” in the city. He said cutting massing at the building was a euphemism for reducing access to teachers and other local workers in the city.

“It’s pretty clear that this is the right project and the right place,” he said. “Please think about our local workers when considering what’s the right number of units here.”

Dennis Kline of the Mill Valley Affordable Housing Committee, an advocacy organization, said the housing project would reduce commuter traffic and the environmental degradation of daily driving.

“We’re very pleased and excited that we’re going to get a project in this town,” Kline said. “In the long haul, it’s all about the situation we have today.”

Some commissioners sought to rebut some of the concerns addressed by the public.

“We looked at more than 70 sites. We looked at every property the city owned,” said commissioner Greg Hildebrand.

Yolles noted the housing project is likely the first of many that will be considered by the Planning Commission.

“What’s at stake is losing the very form of local planning control that we now have if we don’t plan for and build the number of housing units that our housing element calls for,” Yolles said. “I just want to make sure everybody knows what’s on the line.”

If the project is approved, construction and leasing would begin in 2025 and 2026.